Oscar

Oscar is a little boy who took many months to be diagnosed with Crohn's disease. His mum writes about his journey to diagnosis and the warrior she has for a son!

It all started when I stopped breastfeeding Oscar at 18 months old, he got constipated really bad really fast. He would scream in pain every time he went for a bowel movement, he even gave himself carpet burns on his head with all the pushing (he used to go to the bottom step for his bowel movements).

I took him to the doctors nearly every week because of it and they just kept giving him movicol and lactulose that didn’t work very well for him. They finally referred him to the constipation clinic at our local hospital but had to wait a long time for an appointment. We went on holiday and that’s when we noticed he had a lump in his bum cheek, we took him to the nearest a&e and they told us it was an abscess and gave him antibiotics to take.

Once we got home a few days later I took him to our doctor and explained what had happened and that the antibiotics hadn’t made a difference, she prescribed different antibiotics and said if no improvement in 24 hours take him to a&e. I had left it 48 hours hoping it would make a change but still nothing. I took him down to a&e and that’s when they said I would need to take him to the bigger hospital first thing in the morning to get it surgically drained.

We got to the hospital and they had a quick look at it then took him straight down to theatre and drained it, once he was back we asked if there is a chance of it coming back and they told us hopefully not. It wasn’t long after and he developed another abscess and thankfully the antibiotics worked and it went away. Finally we got our appointment through for the constipation clinic where we were told he could try different medicine (senna) to see if it would help. I asked her if it could be anything to do with his tummy and she told me no.

After about a month and a half Oscar got another abscess and another round of antibiotics cleared it, then after about 3 weeks he got another abscess but the antibiotics didn’t work and he needed it drained. When Oscar came round this time he was in a great deal of pain and needed morphine and kept in for the night, the doctor that done the op came and spoke to me and told us they needed to cut a little deeper.

They had noticed inflammation and suspected Crohn’s disease but Oscar would need scopes done to confirm this.

2 weeks later we took Oscar to the bigger hospital for scopes and he was diagnosed with crohns at 2 and a half years old. It was a big shock for all the family as we didn’t really know anything about it.

Oscar has not long turned 4 years old and is doing ok, he is at nursery now and loving playing with all the other boys and girls, he has had to miss a few weeks here and there due to his crohns, he has had another 2 abscesses that have thankfully went away with antibiotics, he was on cipro and metronidazole daily for 15/16months due to his abscesses, he is currently taking mercaptopurine every night and not long finished his first course of pred due to a flare at Xmas, hopefully he won’t get anymore abscesses.

He truly is a little warrior!! He is coping really well with everything that has been thrown at him.

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